National Trust Family Cookbook

Over 100 delicious recipes perfect for a busy family life. Make family meals fun again with this approachable guide to adventurous cooking.

Claire Thomson wants to revitalise cooking for the family – making it less of a chore, with separate meals for children and adults, and more of an enjoyable way to refresh your culinary imagination and make cooking for the family something to look forward to.

The book is divided into timescale sections: quick lunches and suppers that take around 10 minutes, 20 minute reliable recipes, savvy family stalwarts that take 40 minutes at most and unhurried and imaginative recipes that take between 45 minutes and an hour. National Trust Family Cookbook is packed with delicious and colourful recipes for lunches and suppers as well as healthy (and indulgent) breakfast ideas, lunchbox alternatives and food for Sunday roasts and summer barbecues. The dishes include yoghurt, lemon and cardamom chicken wraps, cold Vietnamese noodle salad, quick fish stew and pea and halloumi fritters, as well as smashed tomato toast and coconut, raspberry and lemon syrup loaf. Claire suggests alternative twists and substitutes so you can suit the ingredients to your family’s tastes and what you have in the cupboard – and suggests ways that the kids can get involved in the cooking.

As a mother and a chef, Claire gives real insight into what makes food appealing to all the family and how to shop, cook and eat as a family so that meal times are something for all the family to look forward to.

ABOUT THE Author

Claire Thomson is a chef and food writer, and she is the Family Food Ambassador for the National Trust. Claire runs The Table of Delights, an interactive food website for kids and writes regularly for the Guardian Cook section. She is the author of The Five O’ Clock Apron and lives in Bristol with her three daughters, who are the willing testers for all her recipes.